Ten and fifteen years ago there was more of the traditional problem of the professionals where their basic posture was, "We are the experts. You are the idiots in trouble. Let's help you save your bacon." This wasn't necessarily intended but what came out was a very pompous, patronizing, condescending approach to market. Everyone has gotten a bit more humble, but law and CPA firms partners and marketers are still missing the point. David Maister talks to us about what is crucial we do differently.

Capstone: What improvements have you seen in professional service marketing over the past few years?

Maister: Almost nothing. I still think that both in law and CPA firms partners and marketers are missing the point. The positive things include (1) more focus on things like industry specialization, people beginning to come to market as focused specialists. There was a great reluctance to do that ten years ago. Nobody wanted to limit their marketing. There is a greater recognition ten years later that you have to commit yourself. It's much easier to market a specialist than a generalist. (2) We've seen a lot more progress in people getting client feedback yet the ridiculous mistake they're making is doing nothing with it. That is not only neutral it is absolutely disastrous. The worse thing in the world is to ask your client for feedback, then do nothing about it. It's like a slap in the face. That is what firms, in fact, are doing. In one sense you can say getting client feedback is an improvement but I don't actually believe that because I think that getting feedback without doing anything is stupid. It is, therefore, not an improvement.

I think firms and individuals are slowly beginning to treat clients with a bit of respect. Ten and 15 years ago there was more of the traditional problem of the professionals where their basic posture was, "We are the experts. You are the idiots in trouble. Let's help you save your bacon." This wasn't necessarily intended but what came out, a very pompous, patronizing, condescending approach to market. I think everyone has gotten a bit more humble.

Capstone: Do you think this is because the marketplace has become more competitive?

Maister: Yes. It's not only competitive in price competition. I think clients are rebelling in the sense of who is in charge. You see a lot CPA firms and law firms nowadays where the clients want weekly or monthly reporting of everything the service firm is up to on their behalf. In essence the client is saying, "We don't trust you with our money. We want to know everything you're doing."

Capstone: Do you think the amount of trust the clients have in their CPAs and attorneys has decreased?

Maister: It has decreased dramatically. This is the single issue around marketing and selling that all these lawyers and accountants still do not get which is that marketing and selling is solely about trust. In other words, anybody who needs an accountant or a lawyer we will go through two stages: (1) a qualification stage which is who is out there that's competent. What the lawyers and accountants don't understand is that no matter what the issue is I can always find ten qualified people. Talking about qualifications is not marketing and selling. That's just getting to the game. Now comes the point: Once someone is qualified, now as a buyer I am in the position of saying, "Now my buying choice is to choose among qualified buyers." If they're all qualified then what I choose on has nothing to do with the logical, rational part. What I choose on among people who are equally qualified is, "Whom do I trust?"

Capstone: In a short time period, how can a CPA or an attorney develop that sense of trust with a prospect?

Maister: Let me give you a personal example. I had to hire a lawyer because my aunt died and I had to probate her will. I'll leave out all the idiotic marketing the firms tried to do. I'll go straight to the point of the guy who was a genius. I called an attorney in Brooklyn because that's where my aunt lived. The minute I started explaining my need he interrupted me and asked, "Do you know anything about what it takes to process a will in Brooklyn?" I had no idea. He said, "I think you're unwise in interviewing lawyers if you don't know what you're getting into because you don't have the basis to interview people. If you want to give me your fax number I will fax you a three-page outline of what is involved in processing a will in Brooklyn." The fax contained a lot of useful information and the final paragraph contained contact information for all city, state and federal authorities that needed to be notified. I received all of this information before he has been hired. Without being idealistic I think most human beings' reactions would be to hire that guy. Notice that he did not sell or market at all. What he did was immediately say, "Let me be helpful to you."

The issue I have with people clinging to marketing is that even they don't get it. It's not just the accountants or the lawyers. Even the marketers don't get it. What works is not selling. What works is just start helping people. They will want more. I have been asked to look at proposals written by CPA firms and law firms. The one thing I look for is the thing I just referred to: Where in this proposal is any substantive help? Of course, there never is any. It's what I call prostitute selling. It's saying, "Pay me and I'll do it. It will be wonderful. It will be fabulous once you start paying but I'm not going to show you anything until you start paying." The central issue here that people just don't understand is that one is not making a moral point that you should be nice to clients, it just doesn't work. Even marketing directors are writing newsletters, brochures and proposals boasting about what the firm has and it just doesn't work. This leads you to the conclusion that you should stop marketing, stop selling, and start helping. What works best is figure out who you want to help and go help them. That works.

I always take a vote when I'm with a single firm or at an industry meeting or something and ask, "How many of you read every issue of the trade magazine of your main client?" Forget the other clients they have to serve, just their main client. Less than five percent raise their hands, whether they're accountants or attorneys. Again, I'm not a moralist, it's just pragmatics. How can you convince a client you're interested in his business and that you care and you can help when, in fact, you do not know what's going on in his business?

My point about why there hasn't been much progress in professional service marketing is that everybody is looking for some new, magic, innovative marketing pill that will mean they don't have to get on the real diet. There isn't a magic pill. It has nothing to do with the consequences of the Internet. It's got everything to do with the basics that you've always known that you aren't doing.

I was giving a talk yesterday to a group of management consultants and they asked how to develop relationships with existing clients. The short answer is very simple: You give away time for free. To go and, for example, sit in on their internal meetings at no charge. There you are, sitting in your client's management meeting, listening to what they want to debate, what they're fighting over. The question is: How good at selling do you have to be and the answer is not at all. If you're selling, you're a brain dead idiot. It doesn't mean that selling doesn't work. It means that selling is the hard way to do it. When you do it right you need zero sales skills.

There is no marketing or selling tactic more likely to work to give you a return on investment than giving away that free day to existing clients.

Yet, when you ask how many lawyers are doing it, the answer is less than one percent. In the accounting world it gets up to about five percent but it's not higher than that. How many people are acting as if they cared?

Capstone: What other marketing mistakes are accountants and attorneys making?

Maister: They still judge marketing by revenue instead of profits. In law firms and accounting firms you get credit for new revenues you bring in regardless of whether it is profitable revenues. They still work on the principle of "if it moves, shoot it." That is not good marketing. It is running scared marketing. We are so insecure as people that we can't have the courage to pass on anything. Firms are always diverted from their strategy because they don't have guts.

Let's list some other obvious marketing mistakes. Law firms in particular still have reward systems that celebrate individualism. They preach a good game about wanting to have practice groups and team marketing, and they might even get teams together to make team marketing plans. They never get executed because the reward system says, "Who brought it in?" The trouble with that is not only does it destroy teamwork but it's also like being paid "only if you do it." Then, you never get paid for courting or romance. We only give you origination credit if you actually "did it." As a result, nobody does romance. Everybody is handing out business cards saying, "Do you want to do it?" There's no clever relationship marketing going on because the firms basically diminish and discount the value within the firm of a relationship even though they say they don't, their systems do.

Capstone: If firms were to truly reward teams, the teams themselves would need to figure out the roles of the people who will develop relationships with clients and prospects and the ones who will contribute in technical ways.

Maister: There are two points; the first point is blindly obvious. Go back to my need for a probate lawyer in Brooklyn. I don't know any probate lawyers in Brooklyn. What's the first thing I do that any buyer in the world does when he or she has a new need?

Capstone: Ask for a referral.

Maister: Yes. The key to understanding marketing is to understand buying. The first thing that every buyer in the world does is to ask a friend. In other words, client satisfaction is 90 percent of marketing. If you have a friend that says, "I used this person, she's fabulous, trust her," you can't go wrong. If, however, you get the reaction, "Oh, they were pretty good, they were competent, add them to your list," you now have to do proposals. People preach a good game on client satisfaction; they aren't living it. Therefore, the first thing that firm's should be doing is rewarding those partners or individuals or teams who are gaining levels of client satisfaction above "OK." Anybody who leaves a client saying, "Wow, they were fabulous," just solved 90 percent of our marketing problem. The real punch line is that you don't get to "wow's" with clients by having a client feedback system that you don't follow up. Again, how do you get "wows?" How to you get lawyers and accountants to get the "wow" level on client satisfaction? You have to do something like an unconditional satisfaction guarantee. Now, not necessarily that in particular but you have to do something that tough because it's only if it's that tough that people like you and me will say, "Shoot, I've given my client permission to not pay me if they're not satisfied. I better call that guy." We already knew that stuff but that's not the issue. The issue is what will actually get us to do it.

Capstone: There has to be some consequence.

Maister: There has to be a consequence if we only settle for OK. That's the first step. I think firms are missing the point completely with their actions. I think they intellectually understand it. I'm not insulting their intelligence. I'm insulting their guts. They don't have the guts to put in place a client satisfaction quality system with teeth. What they have in place is a client satisfaction system that checks to make sure that it's "OK." We deal with the disasters. That's not the issue. The question is, "Do you deal with it when the client satisfaction is only OK?" If it's not OK then you have to deal with all the other marketing rubbish that takes three times as long. That's point number one, which is that firms need to get client satisfaction, and then where we started is that applies to a whole team. Everybody on the team is held accountable for that client satisfaction.

The second point about teams is that even when you do get to say new client marketing stuff, this shouldn't be too complex, that if you're going to romance an industry sector or romance a client then you need to include as part of the total package things like putting on a seminar, writing an article, doing some industry research. The point is that under the current regimes of most firms if you write an article there isn't any credit in the firm's system. We only pay for cash brought in. Therefore, nobody wants to write the article. Everybody wants to go out there and bring in cash. All the things that lead up to winning the business are neglected. To go back to my earlier point, we never try to do romance. We try to go for one-night stand quickies because there's no reward within the firm. Now in a good firm, and some do exist, what you'd have whether at the client level of the practice group level a marketing plan for the whole group in which you would assign roles. You'd turn to your tax nerd and say, "You're a genius. What we need you to do is write an article a month for the next year. Give us 12 great tax ideas that the rest of us can take out to our clients." We will pay you mightily for that if they work. You don't give anyone a free ride. If they don't work, we won't pay you. We'll provide the opportunity to contribute to a successful marketing effort through more than one means.